Ciabatta Quotes

It's a funny thing about the modern world. You hear girls in the toilets of clubs saying, "Yeah, he fucked off and left me. He didn't love me. He just couldn't deal with love. He was too fucked up to know how to love me." Now, how did that happen? What was it about this unlovable century that convinced us we were, despite everything, eminently lovable as a people, as a species? What made us think that anyone who fails to love us is damaged, lacking, malfunctioning in some way? And particularly if they replace us with a god, or a weeping madonna, or the face of Christ in a ciabatta roll---then we call them crazy. Deluded. Regressive. We are so convinced of the goodness of ourselves, and the goodness of our love, we cannot bear to believe that there might be something more worthy of love than us, more worthy of worship. Greeting cards routinely tell us everybody deserves love. No. Everybody deserves clean water. Not everybody deserves love all the time.

the ingredients for lunch: ciabatta bread, couscous salad with apricots, ham, and a goat’s cheese flan,

I need bruschetta (that's "broo-SKET-uh," not "brushetter," a slender piece of ciabatta toasted and brushed with garlic and oil and covered in fresh tomato and basil-- the chunks inevitably fall off the bread and the olive oil runs over your lips and down your chin. The whole thing is delicious, deeply physical and delightfully undignified, and a woman who can eat a real bruschetta is a woman you can love and who can love you. Someone who pushes the thing away because it's messy is never going to cackle at you toothlessly across the living room of your retirement cottage or drag you back from your sixth heart attack by sheer furious affection. Never happen. You need a woman who isn't afraid of a faceful of olive oil for that)

Con le macchine pensano di far miracoli: ma quali? Di Dio non sentono più bisogno; ma che sortii di miracolo saranno? Per esempio, non si deve più parlare di alto e di basso: a loro non serve più. Aristotele, che per tutto il resto considerano alla stregua di una vecchia ciabatta, ha detto (e questo lo citano): «Se la spola del telaio girasse da sola, se il plettro della cetra suonasse da sé, i maestri non avrebbero più bisogno di aiutanti, né i padroni di servi». Ed è quello che sta avverandosi mi sa.

disguised as a bran muffin or onion ciabatta, is not really wheat at all but the transformed product of genetic research conducted during the latter half of the twentieth century. Modern wheat is no more real wheat than a chimpanzee is an approximation of a human.

I began by preparing my pasta: my deft fingers forming the intricate shapes of rigatoni, ravioli, spiralli, spaghetti, cannelloni, and linguini. Then I would brew sauces of sardines, or anchovies or zucchini or sheep's cheeses, of saffron, pine nuts, currants, and fennel. These I would simmer in the huge iron cauldrons, which were constantly bubbling above the fire. My pasta dishes, I have to say, were famous throughout the province, and the scent of my sauces carried by the breeze was sufficient to fill a poor man's stomach. I also kneaded bread and produced the finest pane rimacinato, the most delicious ciabatta and focaccia that had ever been tasted in the region. Sometimes I would add wild thyme to the dough, or fragrant rosemary; plucked fresh from the hedgerow, with the dew still on the leaves.

I follow her into the kitchen where she begins unloading the two brown paper bags onto the butcher-block island. I stand there watching as she pulls out a huge, freshly smoked mozzarella, which, by the way she handles it, I can tell is still warm. She sets it down on the cutting board along with the loaf of ciabatta. While I'm considering my next line of questioning, Renata explains, "Jake called to tell me he forgot to show you the postcard I sent out last week listing some new specialty vinegars I'm offering. He asked me to tell you he's interested in sampling some of the blood orange." I stand there looking puzzled, having been only momentarily distracted by the salad possibilities afforded by the aforementioned specialty vinegars. Perhaps a mild goat cheese, encrusted in herbs, baked and drizzled with a fruity olive oil and blood orange vinaigrette.

Well, our Surf and Turf Burger is real good." I pointed to it on the menu. "It's a ground sirloin burger stuffed with seasoned blue crabmeat served on grilled ciabatta bread, or you can get them as sliders. Some people prefer the smaller burgers, easier to manage." "Sliders sound great!" He handed me the menu after I scribbled it down on Betsy's pad. "You want fries, onion rings, or french-fried pickles?

You might expect such a grand hamper to be filled with smoked salmon, a cocktail of olives---ciabatta bread, perhaps. But no. Marcus knows that my taste in food runs to the far side of the Philistine. Instead, the hamper is packed with pork pies, hot pizza wrapped in foil, Walkers crisps, Pringles, my very favorite muffins from Chocolate Heaven and, in its own little cooler, a tub of Ben & Jerry's Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream.

which even Bashō, at the peak of his powers, would have struggled to describe as convincingly as the menu’s scribe: Warm grilled chicken slices, Smoked bacon, crisp lettuce, And a warm ciabatta roll on a bed of sea-salted fries

I ask him to pull the buttermilk sourdough; I'd taken several of my wet starters, fed them vigorously yesterday, and created three different dough variations early this morning, giving them time to rise. "The green bowl." "Yeah, okay," he grumbles. "And I'll take care of the onions," Xavier says. "Why do you need them?" "Ciabatta," Jude says. "Dough." I point to the door. He goes and I show Xavier the container of goat cheese. "I need something splashy. I thought a caramelized onion and Chèvre ciabatta." "Using the buttermilk starter as a base?" "I consistently get the biggest rooms with it." "You need a third ingredient, I think. Apricots?" I nod toward the other table. "Scott's going sweet already. I'll stay savory for contrast. Sun-dried tomato?" "Meh. Expected.

gives me a mouth-full-of-food grin, as we gnaw the edges of our ciabatta sandwiches. I always think these things seem like a good idea and in practice are like chewing bricks, covered in brick dust.

Once I arrived in Italy, I planned to spend my first few hours there baking in the sun like a loaf of ciabatta bread.

Within weeks of ownership, I invested in two used industrial mixers and a brand-new stone deck oven, and branched out from bagels to my personal passion: leaven bread. We make the basics like baguettes, ciabatta, pagnotta, whole wheat, rye and sourdough. But I love to experiment. Custom orders for chocolate-cherry pumpernickel and piñon-nut queso blanco con mango whole wheat garnered so many requests they quickly became store staples along with gourmet delights like bittersweet chocolate croissants, bourbon pecan cinnamon rolls and focaccia pizzas. Friends call my creations the haute couture of bread-making.

I've come to realize my market gig is like therapy for me. I've always loved being surrounded by food, but what I have come to cherish most at these markets is the sense of community. I know Frank the cheese guy and Barbara the mushroom lady. I swap muffins for raspberry jam with Josie at Jefferson Family Farms and ciabatta for apples with Maggie and Drew at Broad Tree Orchards. They've started to accept me as one of their own, at a time when I could use the company.

We window-shopped along Court Street, the closest thing Brooklyn has to Manhattan, perusing the indie clothing boutiques, bookstores, and Italian bakeries, and stopped at Frankies 457 Spuntino, a casual Italian restaurant that every young Brooklynite loves, to pound fresh ricotta, gnocchi, and meatballs. Afterward, I dragged us ten blocks out of the way to hit up Sugar Shop, a modern-retro candy store I loved, to load up on malt balls and gummies. We strolled the magnificent blocks of Victorian homes and green lawns in Ditmas Park, as if suddenly transported from the city's whirl to a faraway college town, perusing the rhubarb, Bibb lettuces, and buckets of fresh clams at the farmers' market, before demolishing fried egg sandwiches on ciabatta at the Farm on Adderly, one of the boroughs now-prolific farm-to-table restaurants. We shared pizza at Franny's: one red, one white, both pockmarked with giant charred blisters from the exceedingly hot brick oven. In a borough known for its temples of pizza worship, before it closed in the summer of 2017, Franny's was right up there, owing to the perfect flavors oozing from each simple ingredient, from the milky mozzarella to the salty-sweet tomato sauce to the briny black olives.